


to everything, turn turn turn

by otterlymagic



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21860314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otterlymagic/pseuds/otterlymagic
Summary: (TROS SPOILERS) Set just after the trailer with Ben in Exegol. A canon divergence AU. More spoilery author notes inside.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	to everything, turn turn turn

**Author's Note:**

> I was a Reylo/Bendemptionist back in 2015 but wasn't in a fic-writing mood for the past few years, just lurked around enjoying everyone else's writing. That changed a couple days ago. I figure we need all the positivity we can get in this fandom.
> 
> So I decided to move on from my depression after being spoiled for TRoS by writing an alternate version of how Ben could "turn" that ends more happily. It basically erases the movie from existence. Canon, what canon?

It’s been a year. It feels longer, like a lifetime, and yet he can picture her face like it was yesterday. That look of despair and determination before she betrayed him, leaving him tucked on his side with his lightsaber in his belt like a sleeping child. The bile rises in his throat at the memory. Just like it was yesterday. 

It’s hard to be alone now, knowing that the Force could connect them at any moment. Even if it doesn’t, he cannot bear to be alone with his thoughts. Nothing he does satisfies him; nothing gives him a rush of power or pleasure or anything at all. He has only rage, ambition, and when those leave him…emptiness. It is a numbing feeling, to be alone when the emptiness hits and he feels like a void, like a black hole, as the light no longer calls to him and the dark pours in. There is no passion, as the Sith code would have you believe. Just darkness.

He doesn’t even hear voices anymore. His nightmares are vivid, but wordless, and they do not stick in his memory once he wakes. This should have made solitude easier, but he still feels watched. Even without Snoke, he feels the tingle at the back of his neck, the sense that there is a hound on the scent for that rich Skywalker blood.

It would be flattering if it was the Resistance trying to hunt him down, but no, there are only a handful of them left. They wouldn’t dare confront him. Only her – and she won’t. She is stubbornly uncaring, with steely eyes that meet his bluntly whenever the Force connects them.

No, it is someone else he senses watching, during the times he’s supposed to be alone. And it shouldn’t be that way. Snoke is gone. He should truly, finally, be alone, if his grandfather no longer speaks to him. The mask has been silent since before her. Sometimes he doubts he ever heard anything from it. So who is watching?

He is here at Exegol. Alone, yet with every hair raised, muscles taut and eyes darting for any hint of movement. There are Sith artifacts here, and towering structures and statues from a thousand years ago. The Dark Side pulses through this place and yes, there are definitely eyes on him here. But even in the ship above the planet’s surface, he tossed and turned with the sense that there was a stalker he could not shake.

Whoever it is, his gut tells him that he will find answers here.

He stalks forward, saber lit, and tells himself that there is no answer that could shake him.

-

He was wrong. He was sickeningly wrong.

-

After the laughter fades and the chill dissipates from his spine, he stumbles back to his ship. Sitting heavily in the cockpit, he leans forward onto his knees, head in his palms, a headache burgeoning behind his eyes.

The world has been ripped from beneath his feet. Every memory upturned, every belief put into question. Once he had felt sure of his path, though there was no joy in it, and that surety is gone. Doubt swirls in his thoughts now. Doubt, and something much worse. 

The part of him that wanted to deny the specter’s accusations outright is quickly surrendering to the everlasting dread that has followed him since before he formed memories. How could this being know that this is his deepest fear – that the Dark has been calling to him, and him specifically, since before he had the words to describe it? How can it be a trick, when every detail rings so true? The fact that it feels so right is an indictment.

_ My boy, _ the voice had rasped at him. Kylo is beyond feeling any sense of belonging when masters speak to him like that. He knows they see only the power, the legacy, the potential apprentice (tool). He doesn’t deny the manipulative affectation. He only feels the weight of inevitability. This is his destiny, and it has been written since before he was born. Since before his grandfather was born. To fight against this fate is to wage a war that stretches beyond mortal sight.

He wonders if the specter can see into his mind now and sense the horror roiling in him. Is it watching his vulnerability and cackling? Is it waiting for the bile to settle down before giving him directions?

It would be a relief, in a way, to receive explicit instructions instead of vague suggestions. To feel the Dark Side stab him like a needle, piercing and direct, instead of a black fog that he is constantly forcing his way through without any sense of where it starts or ends. He is ready to succumb. There is nothing in the void of his soul that wants to deny this fate.

Yet there’s a small voice, the faintest of memories, from a time that seems like a fantasy now, that lingers behind his headache and waits. He lets out a breath, hot and shaky, and squeezes his eyes shut tight to focus beyond the ache. It is her voice, he realizes too late.  _ You are not alone,  _ he’d said, and she’d responded without hesitation,  _ Neither are you. _

It is enough to send him reeling in nausea again, rage and despair again at war in his breast. Lies. He has known only lies. How could he ever believe otherwise? Even the Force lied to him, showing him the vision of her by his side, weapon drawn to fight off their enemies, a smile on her face when her eyes met his. A filthy, brutal lie. What more could he expect from the bodiless fate that controls his existence?

Yet as always with memories of her, there is the flicker of the Light that demands his attention. He has often deluded himself to believe that there was only one Force, but no, his cruel masters are dual. Dark and Light, blinding sun and deepest shadow, pain and delusion, denial and loss. They tug him back and forth like two dogs with a scrap of meat.

_ What do you want, _ he asks, seething, as the Light itches at his skin. He cannot dismiss it, he can only shove it back down or – like now – confront it directly. It has let the Dark win for so long, but it never goes away forever.

There is no privacy, he knows. He opens himself to the Force without fear. It already has him in an unrelenting grip, so what is a little more vulnerability now?

_ What lies do you have for me now? _

-

The vision floods over him with such vividness that he feels crushed.

It is chaos and madness, events and choices flying past his mindsight with no sense of order or meaning. The images are shocking and disjointed, and the faces are familiar but the actions are not.

He sees the specter directing his movements. Sees machinations of Sith long dead, and himself poised to inherit their vision. He sees that change, sees her take his place, the heir of a bloodline that should not exist.

He sees the Resistance hanging on by a thread, the Force rewarding them with unbelievable luck and timing. They are at odds and they don’t know the gift they have in her, but they maintain her loyalty all the same. He sees them on a wild chase for anything that could help them defeat the First Order.

He sees too much of her, far too much. He sees the way she haunts him, the Force connecting them against their will, with a bond that grows ever stronger. He sees talk of dyads, of destinies, and he sees the longing for purpose and meaning mixed with fear that it is hopeless. Their sabers crash together time and time again, even in the midst of destruction, and it is all so painfully desperate.

The images fly faster, wilder, and nothing makes sense but he cannot turn away. There is his mother for a brief moment, and then she dies. He cannot breathe even in the vision. She is calling to him one second, and lying lifeless the next. He sees it rip him to shreds, sees her pity when she sees his reaction. He sees the ghost of his father, sees himself in tears. Lies, it must be lies, but oh how it burns like salt in a fresh wound.

He sees something inconceivable. He sees himself turn and stand by her side, fulfilling her vision. There is a new saber in his hand, and new energy as he fights off the Knights of Ren and all others that stand in their way. He is cast to the side and she defeats the specter. Then there is death. Even in the vision, he feels it to his core.

It is no surprise when he sees himself crawl to her side and break. How many times he has broken, and yet this is the worst. This vision has gone from incomprehensible nonsense to looking like his darkest nightmares. He is holding her in his arms and she is dead. And then, suddenly, no longer.

From nightmare to brightest dream, She looks at him and smiles and calls him by his true name. There is love in her eyes. It is cruel to make him watch this. It is even crueler to see what happens next.

Everything falls apart. In vivid color, he sees horrors beyond imagining. It is senseless, hopeless, and he cannot escape the onslaught of images.  _ Why _ , he asks, and gets nothing in reply. The vision plays out its horrifying conclusion as he screams without voice,  _ why? _

When the vision finishes he heaves, violently, and feels the edges of his vision go black.

Before he can ask why once more, he remembers the start of the vision. The Light flickers more insistently in his chest, and he knows without needing to see it repeated. This is the future, the Light tells him. This is the worst outcome. He has imagined failure, but has never imagined this.

He cannot live with this.

He brushes the back of his palm over his clammy lips and clenches his jaw. Warning received, and understood. There are failures that he cannot accept. There are fates he  _ must _ defy.

All his life, he has watched his nightmares come true, but not this one. He will fight, and he will win, even if it requires a force of will that shakes the very stars in the heavens.

_ For love, _ says the voice deep within him.

The darkness that has haunted him since birth surrounds him like the black wings of a flock of vultures, circling endlessly and waiting for him to tire out and give in. It senses the conflict threatening to rise. It is relentless, believing wholeheartedly in his inability to win.

There is a learned helplessness that threatens to overtake him in moments like these. He is just one man, and for all the legacies placed on him like armor, he does not feel strong.

_ You are not alone, _ says the Light again.

Lies, he thinks, and despair is on the tip of his tongue.

But he remembers the parts of the vision that were not warnings. His mother, with his name on her lips, full of hope that he never felt before. His father, a ghostly memory, stubbornly believing till the end that his little starfighter was inside this broken, masked man. Rey. Always Rey. Her fingertips reaching for his. Her eyes unafraid, understanding, strong, patient.

Maybe this tiny speck of Light within him can be more than it seems. He has always seen it as something ready to be crushed, and yet it remains. Even the smallest of matches can light a forest on fire.

_ Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it, you’ll never make it through the night. _

For all those who have called his name and dared to hope in a future, he swallows the fear that they have only lied. He cannot dismiss the fear entirely, but he will not follow where it leads. Ben Solo will rise and fight one last time. Because if he doesn’t, then what is the point of his birth? If it is only to meet this dark fate and be a Sith pawn, doomed to a senseless nightmarish end, then he would rather go out with a fight than a whimper.

_ You’re my only hope, _ he hears in a distant, earnest whisper, a voice from a long time ago and far, far away.

_ Maybe I am, _ he thinks back, and reaches out for Rey in his mind.

The Dark senses his resolve and dread sends ice into his veins. He grits his teeth and ignores its warnings and demands. He pulls the red saber from his belt and throws it aside. It might only be his imagination, but he feels the ball of Light swell within his chest, now almost as big as his palm.

This is the crossroads, and he is taking the untrodden path. Let the vision be proved lies and let that path remain forever unknown. Ben Solo will rise above it to something better

-

When it is all done, and the voices are gone, and he stands free of all burdens and pain, Rey smiles at him. He will never get tired of seeing that smile. “What are you thinking?” she asks.

“I saw a vision,” he says. His fingers reach out automatically to tangle with hers.

“Of this?” she asks, and her smile widens.

“If I told you, it would only disturb your sleep.” A smile touches his mouth, and it is still an unfamiliar feeling. But he likes it, the way happiness pulls at his lips and swells in his chest. “It was only a vision of what could be. A warning. I defeated it.”

There is contentment on her face, but there is pride also. She brings his fingers up to her lips and kisses them softly. “You make your own fate.”

He leans into her touch. “We do,” he corrects, his voice a rumble that only she can hear.

There is no sense of being watched anymore. No nagging doubts, no fear of lies, no pain of the past. Just the Force between them, a thread of peace and belonging that he never expected to feel. They are not alone – but right now this is a world for them and only them.

A world that they can make together. Ben smiles, and a thrill runs up his spine. “What should we do now?” he asks.

She smiles, and he has no idea what she’ll suggest, but he doesn’t care. He’s excited. He’s ready to truly live.


End file.
